Tearing down Apple's display opener [video] | Hacker News Reader

Tearing down Apple's display opener [video]

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A pity the reviewer doesn't get it to work.

The reviewer falls into the same trap as others regarding repair equipment like this; they think it's too complicated and durable and want to compare it to their hobbyist equipment. They're forgetting that the official equipment is meant to be used thousands of times, by minimally trained and overworked staff, with the least amount of damages. Hence the whole setup for each phone model have a special phone cradle, that has an RFID chip that sets up the recommended heating temperature and time, because the tech is going to put the phone into the heater and then walk away to do something else, and doesn't want to come back to a damaged mess like if they used the "cheap" hobby heating plate for too hot or too long.

One of YouTube comments is like "whoa, it costs $100 for each new heating plate, what a ripoff" which is absurd when you amortize that cost over the hundreds of phones it will service and how much each screen costs.

The official repair equipment is also an evolution of assembly equipment. If you need a jig to hold a phone, it is easier to start with the solid metal jig design used by the machine that built the phone in the first place.

> The official repair equipment is also an evolution of assembly equipment.

Are you saying that as a fact or is it speculation?

I've worked for companies where this was a fact. Why would you design the same fixture twice?

Because they are potentially completely different processes. It is certainly possible, but what I see is a test fixture that could be made completely separate. Therefore it would be interesting to know if it wasn't, how they know that it wasn't and why Apple wouldn't on production lines costing many millions to billions.

> like if they used the "cheap" hobby heating plate for too hot or too long.

So a simple timer should cost hundreds of dollars?

So a simple timer should cost hundreds of dollars?

If it was a simple timer, your sarcasm would make sense. But as noted by the person you replied to, it's not a simple timer. It's part of a more complex solution intended for a different environment than social media outrage bait hobbyists.

In no world can I imagine Apple putting out a tool with instructions like "Wave your mom's hair dyer at this a few times back-and-forth and guess when it might be just about hot enough, but not too hot. You'll know it by smell, after you destroy enough devices."

It is fair to judge it as a self repair tool when it is presented as such by Apple.

Apple got strong-armed into making this available.

As to why they didn't create a hobbyist-grade tool for the self-repair program - all it would take is a couple of $900 phones damaged (followed by the outrage social media posts) by non-technical end-users to negate any savings. Better to make it bullet-proof.

They're forgetting that the official equipment is meant to be used thousands of times, by minimally trained and overworked staff, with the least amount of damages.

The various repair shops you can find in parts of China and East Asia in general can do the same if not even more in-depth (i.e. component-level) repairs, and they certainly don't need expensive specialist equipment like this either.

But I expect those shops have a small number of very experienced staff? If you trained at the knee of a master, I'm sure you can soften those adhesives with a heat gun without overdoing it, but it's hard to just box that knowledge up and send it to someone green.

They certainly didn't skimp on the components. That thing looks expensive inside and out.

The connectors are beautiful

I find surprising that comments are aimed to discourage people fixing phone themselves and still somehow justifying apple bad appleness.

What an over-engineered piece of junk. I am convinced one of the requirements was that the design should be intentionally over-complicated. It is a f** heating plate with a suction device. Why the hell do you need all those different cartridges, an RFID chip, and a giant touchscreen for that?

So that employees can use it with minimal training and be guaranteed it won't damage the phone because they misaligned it or used the wrong temperature or for the wrong length of time.

This isn't meant for occasional boutique repairs, it's meant to work perfectly a thousand times a month for many, many months.

Can't you imagine a few ways to reach the same requirements with a significantly simpler and less wasteful design?

What is the point of this giant touchscreen, for example? It doesn't even show descriptive error messages. And once you have this useless display, it will drive more complexity into the design.

The fact is, you don't even need a CPU to meet the requirements. A simple microcontroller would be cheaper and less fragile while saving you the trouble of designing a complex digital circuit out of simpler timers, op-amps, and flip-flops.

Really, I refuse to believe that the best way to realize this design is by packing it with probably more computational power than what you had in Apollo's Guidance Computer.

The iPhone itself outshines the Apollo guidance computer. The tool to repair a tool may require sophisticated tooling. Apple doesn't need to design tools for part time installers. Apple already has one that works well and was forged on the front lines. For a reasonable fee Apple will let you borrow it and Apple expects you to be happy with your results.

If there is such a big market for the supply of these sophisticated but in-expensive tools it will be exploited by someone.

Literally any modern computer outshines Apollo guidance computer. It's 50 years old.

Yes, my point was the sophistication of Apollo guidance computer is a poor yard stick, although it may outshine the D-17B.

Yeah, you could skip the NFID+hotpockets system and just have adjustable heating elements and use the touchscreen to select the appropriate program.

Now if you adjust the heat elements wrongly, you can fail to weaken the glue in some spots, and the screen will break when you’re removing it. Also you might select the wrong program and insufficiently weaken the glue (broken screen again), or damage a phone not able to take the higher heat a different model can. Also it doesn’t prevent you from using this device on a phone that’s changed in dimensions due to battery expansion - now you’re heating an already expanding battery, good recipe for a battery fire.

The presence of a touchscreen that doesn’t utilize the touch functionality tells me they have learned some of these lessons the hard way.

I mean maybe, but why even care?

This is low volume manufacturing. There are probably 1,000's of these, not 100,000's. They probably selected the components that were easiest to purchase in small quantities and assemble, and whatever the engineer was most familiar with. Maybe there's a touchscreen in case they want to do a firmware update someday to improve it.

But at low volumes, why be bothered even if it is overengineered? All this stuff is cheap. It's not a big deal. It's not even for consumers.

You are trying to optimize the cost of something that doesn’t need cost optimizing.

“Hey boss, shall I spend a week to reduce the cost of a low volume $1000 device by $2? Or shall I reuse stuff that we already have?”

As for the RFID part: I’ve been involved in creating setups for a production environment. You want to avoid an operator to make decisions because they will mistakes otherwise. The RFID solution is elegant and prevents an operator from accidentally cooking a $1000 device.

It's interesting that the YouTube comments have multiple supposed AASPs saying that the display opener breaks due to software failures on a regular basis.

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